Holiday Cooking Disaster Thread

[Dave1982]

Ugh......

For the first time in at least 6 years, I've had a batch of cookies come out wrong. Badly wrong.

Last night I whipped up a batch of snickerdoodle dough (which has to chill before you can cook it). This is the first time I'm making snickerdoodles for the holidays, but not the first time I've made them.

For those of you who don't know, snickerdoodles need to be rolled in a cinnamon/sugar mixture prior to baking. And I thought it'd be a wonderfully festive idea to use dyed sugar so I could have red snickerdoodles and green snickerdoodles. So picked up some red and green sugar, mixed up two bowls of the mixture (using some regular sugar and some of the colored sugar) and started making cookies.

What I SHOULD have done was make a test cookie to see if the colored sugar idea would work, but I didn't think it'd be a problem, so I went ahead and coated all 3 dozen cookies before putting any of them in the oven.

So imagine my surprise when the colored sugar mostly melted off the cookies and started sticking to the pans. Making matters worse, the sugar on the bottoms also stuck to the pan, which pretty much meant that every single cookie was damaged as it came off the pan. Lots of them broke. Of 40 cookies, only ONE came out properly.

While they still taste great, they are falling apart, misshapen, damaged, and just look weird.

Obviously, dyed decorating sugar isn't intended to be baked in an oven.....

I think next time (I still have batches to make for work and for my mother's side of the family) I'll try putting a small pinch of colored sugar on the top of each cookie, and if that doesn't work, just make standard, non-colored snickerdoodles.

I suppose I could put some food coloring in the dough if I really want colored cookies, but I don't have any, and I don't really feel like dicking around with that.

Oh well. At least the oatmeal-raisin-craisin cookies came out perfect.


So, if anyone else has a cooking disaster, post it here!

[Jester]

I love cooking. I cook a lot. And the law of averages says that if you do something a lot, you are going to screw it up. (Non-cooking equivalent: if you bicycle a lot, eventually you are going to crash.)

My personal cooking bane seems to be mashed potatoes. Every time I try to make them, I find a way to screw them up.

My most recent battle against my starchy arch-nemesis was a few Thanksgivings ago, when I cooked dinner for myself and a few friends. The ham with the whiskey honey glaze was spectacular. My tropical cranberry sauce was awesome, as always. Hell, my friend MT said that he had always hated cranberry sauce, but that I had changed his entire perception of what it was and what it could be. And the sourdough stuffing was simply brilliant! And that is not merely me patting myself on the back....this is what my friends said.

And then there were the potatoes.

What I was trying to make was redskinned horseradish mashed potatoes.

What I GOT was redskinned horseradish potato GLOP.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what I did wrong. Because of earlier disasters, I was not going with my gut, but with an actual recipe with actual directions and measurements. And....kaboom! Right in the kisser.

I still get shit for those potatoes from my friends, even though the rest of the meal was awesomeness.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Whenever I make cookies, almost invariably the first tray will come out overdone because the time the recipe says to cook them is never quite the time they actually need to be cooked. Can't say I've ever seen any truly spectacular holiday cooking disasters, though. Then again, my family doesn't generally get into hugely fancy cooking experiments.

[Kittish]

My worst disaster so far has been a fairly recent batch of banana bread. I had the bright idea to use coconut flour instead of regular flour in it, since I had the coconut flour and hadn't used it. I did a straight substitution... mistake number one. The resulting 'dough' was dry, granular, would NOT stick together... gah.

So I tried to salvage it, mistake number 2. I added more eggs. I added applesauce. I added more butter... Eventually, some half a dozen eggs, couple of cups of applesauce, and stick of butter later, the dough at least would stay together. Maybe it would work out ok... into the oven with it!

I must say it SMELLED absolutely wonderous as it was in the oven. The house was permeated with the scent of banana and toasted coconut. Yum! After half an hour I checked on it (I was using a mini loaves pan, not a full size bread pan). It looked like it hadn't even STARTED cooking through. Hmm. Back into the oven. 15 minutes later... no change. ANOTHER 15 minutes later... well, the toothpick came out clean in the one I tested, even though it still looked raw.

Set the pan on a rack to cool a bit, then try to remove one of the mini loaves. Which promptly dissolved into something resembling lumpy sand. Lovely. It still smelled just awesome, so I had to taste it, maybe it was at least edible even if it wasn't pretty. Blech. It tasted like vaguely coconut flavored sand. Not even remotely edible.

Lesson learned. Coconut flour is NOT an acceptable substitue for regular flour as it's claimed to be.

[MaggieTheCat]

Dave:

I've used colored sugars on raw cookie dough and then baked it, but generally I only put the colored sugars on top of the cookies as decoration, as opposed to rolling the dough in it. Usually colored sugar granules are much bigger than standard white sugar, so I'm thinking that might be the problem you had; they melted, and because they were so big, stuck to your pan. A couple of suggestions:

Use parchment paper, if you don't already. It's an absolute must in my kitchen. Provides a nice non-stick surface, and saves you from washing the cookie sheets most of the time, which is great for me since my sink is tiny and my cookie pans don't fit well in my sink at all.

Make your own colored sugar. Just take the desired amount of regular white sugar (around 1/4-1/2 cup, usually), place in a ziploc baggie, and add a couple drops of regular old food coloring. Close the baggie and mush it up in your hands for a few minutes. At first, it may look like the food coloring is going to clump up and not dissolve well, but if you keep working it, it will eventually make all the sugar colored. I have, in fact, used this technique to make snickerdoodles myself (without parchment paper, too) so I know for a fact that it will work.

Now, on to my own cooking disaster!

Okay, actually, this isn't mine, it's my mom's. It happened a good 10 or so years ago. It was my birthday, and she said she would make me anything I wanted for breakfast, dinner, and dessert. I can't remember off-hand what I asked for for breakfast; maybe waffles. For dinner and dessert, I asked for homemade enchiladas and bread pudding, respectively. She had her own recipes for both of these dishes, which is what I was planning on her making, which is why I specifically requested them. Instead, she found two "new and improved" recipes for the enchiladas and bread pudding and...they were not good at all. The enchiladas came out very, very dry and stuck horribly to the pan, and just didn't taste right. The bread pudding by itself was, I think, okay, but she made a rum sauce to go over it, and it was absolutely OVERPOWERINGLY strong. Maybe I would appreciate it more now, but when I was 15 or 16, I did not like the taste of alcohol (that's right, I didn't drink as a teenager; in fact, I refused to drink at all until I turned 21) and the sauce completely ruined the pudding. Even my dad and my brother said that the sauce was way too strong and dominated the dish.

[AccountingDrone]

I love cooking. I cook a lot. And the law of averages says that if you do something a lot, you are going to screw it up. (Non-cooking equivalent: if you bicycle a lot, eventually you are going to crash.)

My personal cooking bane seems to be mashed potatoes. Every time I try to make them, I find a way to screw them up.

My most recent battle against my starchy arch-nemesis was a few Thanksgivings ago, when I cooked dinner for myself and a few friends. The ham with the whiskey honey glaze was spectacular. My tropical cranberry sauce was awesome, as always. Hell, my friend MT said that he had always hated cranberry sauce, but that I had changed his entire perception of what it was and what it could be. And the sourdough stuffing was simply brilliant! And that is not merely me patting myself on the back....this is what my friends said.

And then there were the potatoes.

What I was trying to make was redskinned horseradish mashed potatoes.

What I GOT was redskinned horseradish potato GLOP.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what I did wrong. Because of earlier disasters, I was not going with my gut, but with an actual recipe with actual directions and measurements. And....kaboom! Right in the kisser.

I still get shit for those potatoes from my friends, even though the rest of the meal was awesomeness.

Depends on how you put the measured ingredients together ... with potatoes you have to coat the starch molecules with oils before adding liquids, so it is butter and mix, then milk and whip. Horseradish qualifies as liquid, add it after the butter.

If you add liquid first it turns to wallpaper paste as the starch molecules swell up and adhere to each other.

[Jester]

I don't know what I did wrong, as I followed the instructions pretty much to the letter, as I said. I have not attempted mashed potatoes since.

By the way, I don't know how horseradish counts as a liquid. It was minced horseradish, similar in texture to minced garlic. I only added the solids from the jar, draining off the liquid part.

[Severen13]

A few years ago my mother was cooking the Thanksgiving turkey in of those big cooking bag thingies. She opened the bag to do some basting and a bunch of juice splashed out into the stove. Cue the whole house filling with smoke, the smoke alarm going nuts, and me having to go outside to breathe and relieve my burning eyeballs.

Fun times.

[Broomjockey]

I still get shit for those potatoes from my friends, even though the rest of the meal was awesomeness.

You're kidding, right? You, of all people make this mistake? They're not giving you shit despite how awesome the rest was, but because of how awesome the rest was. They probably know that it's a button that'll be good to needle you with for years. "Hey Jester, remember that awesome meal you made? Remember those potatoes? Bwahahaha." If it was mediocre, they wouldn't bother picking on the one failure of the meal. Wear your failure with pride, man!

[Food Lady]

Jester, I totally 'd at your phrase "starchy arch-nemesis"! Is it possible you cooked the potatoes too long? I've done that and gotten paste. If you boil them, it should be 20 minutes, max.

[Jester]

They probably know that it's a button that'll be good to needle you with for years.

Precisely what they've done.

Wear your failure with pride, man!

NEVER!!! To quote the (not so) great Michael Vick, [monotone] "I will redeem myself. I have to." [/monotone]

Jester, I totally 'd at your phrase "starchy arch-nemesis"! Is it possible you cooked the potatoes too long? I've done that and gotten paste. If you boil them, it should be 20 minutes, max.

Nope. It wasn't paste, and I didn't overcook them when I boiled them. I merely used that phrase because, well, it was funny. The end result was gloppy soup potato stuff. Not quite what I was going for!

[Food Lady]

Precisely what they've done. NEVER!!! To quote the (not so) great Michael Vick, [monotone] "I will redeem myself. I have to." [/monotone] Nope. It wasn't paste, and I didn't overcook them when I boiled them. I merely used that phrase because, well, it was funny. The end result was gloppy soup potato stuff. Not quite what I was going for!

Then I dunno. But I don't know what to do with new potatoes. I'm intimidated by them. I can do many things to russets, though.

[NightWatch]

I make the most amazing mashed potatoes EVER. I do on occasion add just a little too much milk which makes them a touch on the soupy side. So I attack them with the handmixer til they fluff and make an onion gravy. When these 2 items combine, they have the consistency of flavored air. It's inhumanly, and unfairly delicious.

As far as kitchen disasters, I've made a few bad things, but I think the FUNNIEST one, was my dad's kitchen disaster. He makes roasted chickens on a near monthly basis. They are normally delicious and even now that I no longer live at home, I still like to go over to his house for such dinners. Well he bought a chicken that has an outer plastic wrapping, and an inner plastic wrapping. The inner plastic wrap was clear and apparently my dad wasn't paying attention when he stuffed it in the oven.

So dinner time. Mom hasn't come home yet from work, so it's just dad and I in the dining room and he presents his chicken with pride. I snort and make no real attempt at stifling my giggles. He stops dead in his tracks and glares at me suspiciously. My dad and I act more like brother and sister sometimes because we love to prank each other. Sometimes these pranks end in pain. He thinks I'm gonna try something.
dad: "What in the hell are you laughing at?!"
me: hehehe! the bird BAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
dad: what's wrong with it????!!!
me: you didn't take the plastic off *nearly falls off chair laughing, can no longer breathe*
Dad: no I didn- Oh.. SHUT UP!!!

That was the driest damn roast chicken I have ever had.
There was also my mothers blueberry pie. Recipe called for 6cups flour and 2cups sugar in the berry mix. She wasn't paying attention and put in 6 cups of sugar.. then 2 cups of sugar... yeaaahhh, it was like a liquid pile of cotton candy. It actually made your teeth hurt.

[Jester]

I don't know what to do with new potatoes. I'm intimidated by them.

That's the funny part: I use them all the time. I have made amazing home fries with them, and I use them in my Famous German Stew without problem. This was the only time EVER that I had a problem with red potatoes (or new potatoes, if you prefer).

...an onion gravy.

I love onions. I love gravy. I would LOVE that recipe! Please please please please please please please?!?!?

...the consistency of flavored air. It's inhumanly, and unfairly delicious.

The Bar makes its mashed potatoes from scratch, and they are always awesome, but the last few weeks, they have been even awesomer, as light and fluffy as I remember in my three years on the job!

Have I ever mentioned how much I not only love my job, but the kitchen at my job as well? In my 20+ years in the business, this is easily one of the best kitchens I have EVER worked with.

Mmmm.....potatoes.... (isn't it odd that I don't like fries all that much?)

[AccountingDrone]

I don't know what I did wrong, as I followed the instructions pretty much to the letter, as I said. I have not attempted mashed potatoes since.

By the way, I don't know how horseradish counts as a liquid. It was minced horseradish, similar in texture to minced garlic. I only added the solids from the jar, draining off the liquid part.

Horseradish mixes in better when it is mixed into the milk and then whipped into the potatoes, gets a better dispersion. Though I prefer golden potatoes for mashed potatoes instead of idaho russets or red potatoes.